


and there are no ghosts here

by icarusandtheson



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Horror Elements, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Monster!Alex, Paranormal Investigators, Pining, Psychological Drama, Sharing a Bed, and possibly:, magic!alex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 18:11:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16310186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarusandtheson/pseuds/icarusandtheson
Summary: George Washington has spent the last two decades of his life pursuing the unknown. With the help of his protégé Alexander, he takes on what at first seems to be a routine if powerful demonic infestation, only to quickly realize both men are vastly out of their depth.





	and there are no ghosts here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LeftHook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeftHook/gifts).



> For LeftHook, whose enthusiasm for my Paranormal Investigators!Whamilton AUs led me here, and for the Tumblr Anon who wanted Whamilton in a haunted house and probably did not anticipate a sentient malevolent psychological labyrinth. Happy October! <3

Alex doesn’t bother trying to sleep. The bed is comfortable, bigger and softer than anything he’s ever owned, nearly warm enough to compensate for the unseasonable cold clinging to every corner of the room; it does nothing to dispel the steadily thickening air, or the wet, rotting musk clinging bur-like to the back of his tongue.

Shadows scrawl across the ceiling, thick enough in places to look nearly tangible. Coarse like fur, maybe, or slick like the roof of a large, gaping mouth. Alex looks into the dark until his eyes ache, a sharp pressure deep in his head. He sits up, gropes over the covers until he finds the worn fabric of his sweatshirt. The added layer doesn’t do much against the strange cold working its way into his bones, but it’s something. 

He thinks of Washington’s sweaters, all warm and finely made. The corner of his mouth twists into some expression he doesn’t have to see, doesn’t have to think about in the dark.

He pads out into the hall, leaves his book bag slumped somewhere in the dark. Nothing in Washington’s vast collection has helped them yet. Washington took a thick binder to bed with him, scraps of dead languages leaking from the corners of it. He’s wasting his time; whatever company they have in this house doesn’t recognize any language they could find in the written record. 

Washington knows it too, even if he hasn’t admitted it yet. There’s no other reason for Alex to be here, miles past the middle of nowhere; Washington could read old spells by himself. 

The scent is stronger in the hall, meat and spoiled milk. Alex’s stomach lurches uneasily for a few moments before settling. It took him by surprise, how easy it was to adapt. To the scent, to the feeling of moving through something living. He curls his toes against the floorboards -- blood-warm, they almost give beneath the pressure.  

He pauses by the master bedroom. There’s a faint light spilling out from underneath the door. Alex wonders if Washington slept at all, if nightmares woke him or if he submerged himself in work to avoid it altogether.

He could knock. Washington would let him in, and -- 

The floor creaks under Alex’s feet. He keeps moving. Empty bedrooms gape like mouths down along the hallway. Alex glances away from their doorways, keeps his eyes on the floor as he makes his way downstairs. 

Something scratches at the door to the basement; Alex ignores it, makes his way towards the kitchen. Upstairs, heavy footsteps. The door creaks, wood straining as if bearing the brunt of a sudden heavy weight.   

“You can’t fucking have him,” Alex mutters, feeling his way around the fruit bowl until his fingers slide across smooth, waxy skin.

The house settles, a low, roiling sound. Alex takes the apple between his teeth and bites down, loud. One of these things sounds like hunger.

\---------

Alex leaves his room at sunup, finds Washington’s door wide open. He’s sitting on the floor, his head tipped back against the wall. The early morning sunlight doesn’t quite reach him, but Alex can see the sweat dripping down his throat, trickling to the fine chain he wears around his neck. Gold and sweat glisten where they catch the light.

The room is thick with the scent of sage and sulfur, Washington’s hands smudged with ash, his shirt soaked through. Alex can smell him from where he’s standing, salt and heat.

“You’re wasting your energy,” Alex says, because it’s the truth and he owes Washington at least that. 

Washington’s hand curls and uncurls around air, the movement so perfectly expressive it could be a spell of its own. Alex would teach him, if he could -- how to know the power before the words, how to speak it,  _ think it _ into being without leaning on paper or fragmented traditions. But Washington can only borrow, and it’s a heavy weight on him. 

“If you have a better plan, I’d be happy to hear it.” Washington brings his head forward, something like a challenge in his eyes despite the exhaustion carved into his face. 

“We go down and we extinguish it at the source,” Alex says, like it’s obvious. It  _ is  _ obvious, has been since the first time he suggested it, but Washington doesn’t see.

“No.”

“But --”

“You’d be walking straight into its mouth. I won’t allow it.”

“It doesn’t want me.” And god help him, he understands the house right now. Washington’s heat thick in his nose and he understands craving that warmth, wanting it all to himself. That bright sun in Washington’s chest -- Alex would swallow it down, warmth in his own belly.  

“No, Alexander.” Washington’s jaw tightens, that familiar stubborn set. 

“So I’m here to do what, exactly? Sit on my ass and watch you slowly get eaten alive?”

Some of the sternness fades from Washington’s face, his gaze softening. “It’s not your responsibility to worry about me, son. We’ll find another way.”

Something bitter and burning sits on Alex’s tongue, but he swallows it. “You should get some rest,” he mutters. The air feels heavy, humid like a breath. Washington’s gaze sharpens, just for a moment. 

He leaves Washington there on the floor. 

\---------

The last dregs of sunlight reach across the living room floor. Alex stretches his foot out, toes catching the light. There’s a book in Alex’s lap in case Washington gets suspicious, something old and Latin and patently useless, but Alex can hear him moving around the kitchen, the staccato of his knifework as he prepares dinner.

Alex presses his hand to the door, and waits. Nothing surges to meet him, scratching at the door like some desperate animal. It’s quiet. The wood is warm, smooth to the touch. It expands slow but sure beneath his palm before retracting again. Repeating, rhythmic, like the contractions of some great organ. 

He tries to follow the movement of it, tries to look inside the veins and ventricles and see what’s inside. Long black corridors, labyrinthine, a body curling in on itself with dizzying detail until Alex pulls his hand away. His palm is warm and sweating, and he’s left with the sense of a vast, gaping dark. It sits in him, opening up inside his chest, pushing against his lungs, scrutinizing all the hidden places with eyes and tongues and teeth.        

Washington is humming something slow and sweet. Alex pushes himself to his feet and follows the sound into the kitchen, watches Washington’s back, watches Washington’s knife glint as it catches the light.

Washington pauses at the sound of footsteps and glances over his shoulder, eyes wary. He glances at the book. “Any luck?” he asks, his voice carefully level. 

Alex opens the kitchen drawer, collecting cutlery. “No, nothing useful.”

The scrape of metal on wood as Washington clears the cutting board. His sleeves are rolled up past his elbows, exposing the strong lines of his forearms. Alex drops his gaze, watches his guilty reflection in the silverware instead and feels something inside of him unfurl.  

\---------

Alex wakes up in the dark. The scent of rot is everywhere, the air in his room molasses-thick and the darkness so complete he can feel it, a slick thing sliding against damp skin. For a moment his mind is blank panic, a perfect mirror of the shifting, humming blackness. He swallows the fear down whole, the fur and the teeth of it, and struggles to sit up. 

His heart is a skittering animal thing in his chest, burrowing down for safety, for warmth. There’s an ache deep in his jaw, dull and persistent behind his teeth. 

He’s standing at Washington’s door, running his palm along the wood. He knocks, he must have knocked, because there’s footsteps and then there’s Washington, standing in the doorway with the light at his back. The animal in Alex’s chest whines and then goes still. 

Washington frowns, his brow furrowed. “Alexander? What’s wrong, are you alright?”

“Bad dreams,” Alex says, because it’s easier, simpler. It takes him a moment to recognize the rasp of his voice. He swallows, dry-mouthed. “I fucking hate this place,” he says, which is also simpler than the truth. 

Washington sighs. “I know.” He rests a hand on Alex’s shoulder, squeezes once before guiding him into the room. “Lie down, try to rest. I’ll be here.”

The bed is still made, untouched. Both bedside tables are covered in books, Washington’s notebook sits open on the armchair. Alex glances at the clock. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

Washington smiles, brief and wry. “Probably, yes.”  

Alex makes his way into Washington’s bed. There are shadows in the places the light can’t reach, and something prickling sits on the back of his tongue. The sheets are cold. 

“You’re not going to find anything tonight,” Alex says. “Maybe we can both get some sleep.” Washington’s brow raises for a moment, but he nods. Alex shifts over, gives more space than he needs to. Washington’s hand goes to the waistband of his sweatpants, but he pauses, aborts the movement and climbs into bed fully clothed. 

His thigh brushes Alex’s as he rolls onto his side, firm and warm through the soft fabric.  

Alex’s stomach rumbles, a low, roiling sound. He edges his head forward until he’s on Washington’s pillow, and breathes him in.

\---------

Washington’s nightmares are quiet. Alex can smell them, the rot and the animal fear that Washington has no part of, but Washington is silent, his back a steel line even in sleep. Alex lays his hand on Washington’s back, the fabric sticking wetly to his skin, to Alex’s. Alex thinks warmth, thinks safety, thinks of a small animal curled in a soft nest. Washington’s breathing eases for a moment, and then the fear again, the terrible longing turning the air liquid-thick around them. 

Alex rolls over, fits himself against Washington’s back and reaches for his arm. His fingers slip against Washington’s bicep, his skin slicked over with sweat. Alex can feel the beat of Washington’s pulse, steady and strong, and below that the murmur of his power, warm and golden where it threads through his bones. Alex wraps his hand around Washington’s wrist, feels where the gold unspools into the arteries and the marrow, fraying sunlight. 

He rests his forehead against Washington’s back. Something scratches at the floorboards, at Alex’s back, bitter and stinging even through the fabric of his shirt, but when Alex breathes, he can only smell Washington’s skin, the clean and the salt and the bright of it.   

_ You can’t have him,  _ Alex thinks, again and again until the words are just fragments at the back of his tongue. All that perfect, awful warmth in his hands and he just holds it, just holds him and doesn’t take any of it. 

Washington eases, after a while. Alex’s chest is raw meat, clawed open bloody from the inside. He unwinds his body from Washington’s and rolls onto his back. The light is terrible and beautiful and bright and he doesn’t want to look at it, can’t look at it. 

The light goes out. 

\---------

The house is tense and waiting. Alex’s supplies are in his bedroom; he doesn’t bother retrieving them, won’t need them where he’s going. He veers off to the kitchen on a whim, pulls the knife out from the block. Upstairs, there’s silence. Alex flips the bolt on the basement door and shines his flashlight down. 

The staircase fades out into the thick, liquid dark. The flashlight shines and stops abruptly, as if it’s hitting something solid. The scent is almost unbearable this close.

He steps down into the dark, and pulls the door shut behind him.  

\---------

There’s a crack in the basement wall. It oozes water, a fine, steady flow pooling by Alex’s head, mixing with the blood. It’s warm, the water or the blood. The drip of it is the loudest thing in his ears, liquid on concrete, solid on concrete, shoes on concrete, Alex’s skull against the concrete and --

“Alexander, what have you done?”

Washington’s shoes against the concrete. 

“You’re not supposed to be here.” Then, because that’s not exactly right, “You don’t belong down here.”

“Neither do you, son.” The rustle of clothes, Washington’s hands on him, laying over his chest, smoothing back his damp hair. 

“You need to leave.”

“I can’t,” Washington says. “The door locked behind me.” He presses two fingers to Alex’s pulse point. His thumb brushes Alex’s mouth, for a moment. Alex opens, and something trickles out, the water or the blood. “You’ll just have to get me out of here, since you seem so keen on protecting me.” 

Alex chokes on a laugh, or on his own spit. Not so shocking, that Washington figured him out in the end. “You were supposed to leave.”

“And you were supposed to stay upstairs.”

“I couldn’t. It hurt.”

“I know.”

“I’m starving, sir.”

“I know, son.” The scrape of hard rubber soles on concrete as Washington settles beside him, his back to the wall. “I’ll take care of it.”

**Author's Note:**

> *Thanks for reading! Leave a kudos and comment if you liked it!  
> *Find me on Tumblr at [icarusandtheson](https://icarusandtheson.tumblr.com/)


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